And Cross-Country Price Dispersion in the Euro Area
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A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Reiff, Adam; Rumler, Fabio Working Paper Within- and cross-country price dispersion in the euro area ECB Working Paper, No. 1742 Provided in Cooperation with: European Central Bank (ECB) Suggested Citation: Reiff, Adam; Rumler, Fabio (2014) : Within- and cross-country price dispersion in the euro area, ECB Working Paper, No. 1742, ISBN 978-92-899-1150-4, European Central Bank (ECB), Frankfurt a. M. This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/154175 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. 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Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu WORKING PAPER SERIES NO 1742 / NOVEMBER 2014 WITHIN- AND CROSS-COUNTRY PRICE DISPERSION IN THE EURO AREA Ádám Reiff and Fabio Rumler GROCERY PRICES IN THE EURO AREA: FINDINGS FROM INFORMAL ESCB EXPERT GROUP SET-UP TO ANALYSE A DISAGGREGATED PRICE DATASET In 2014 all ECB publications feature a motif taken from the €20 banknote. NOTE: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the European Central Bank (ECB). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily refl ect those of the ECB. Grocery prices in the euro area: Findings from informal ESCN expert group to analsyse a disaggregated price dataset This paper was prepared as part of a Eurosystem project group established to analyse a large-scale disaggregated dataset on grocery prices in the euro area. This proprietary dataset was obtained as a follow up to the 2011 Eurosystem Structural Issues Report (SIR) entitled “Structural features of the distributive trades and their impact on prices in the euro area”. The main motivation for obtaining these data was to enable the analysis of a variety of issues that was previously not possible owing to data limitations. More specifi cally (i) analysis of Single Market issues and quantifi cation of border effects (ii) measuring the impact of competition – both at the producer and retail level – on consumer price levels and (iii) consider potential implications for infl ation measurement arising from structural changes in retail sector such as the growing importance of discounters and private label brands. The data were obtained from Nielsen, an international market information and measurement company. The dataset is multi-dimensional with approximately 3.5 million observations each for the price, value and volume variables across a number of dimensions (13 countries; approximately 45 product categories; approximately 70 regions; approximately 10 store types on average per country; 4 brands per product category and 3 stock-keeping units - skus - per brand). The data are generally collected from barcode scanners. These cross country data are unique in a number of respects, in particular in that (a) there are data on average price levels across regions within countries, (b) there is information on both prices and volumes, and (c) there are data on aggregated private label sales and prices. The data have been cross-checked against HICP and PPP data and found to be highly congruent. The expert group was chaired by Bob Anderton (ECB) and Aidan Meyler (ECB) acted as Secretary. We are also grateful to Stefanos Dimitrakopoulos (Warwick University) who, whilst at the ECB as a trainee, provided invaluable assistance in compiling and working with the database. Preliminary results from the project group were initially presented at an informal Eurosystem workshop which took place in Frankfurt on 22 November 2013. Apart from the members of the expert group a small number of external participants were invited to the workshop. The following participants acted as discussants: Mario Crucini (Professor of Economics, Vanderbilt University, and Senior Fellow, Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute, Dallas Fed); Daniel S Hosken, US Federal Trade Commission (Deputy Assistant Director); Jarko Pasanen, Eurostat (Team Leader: Price Statistics, Purchasing Power Parities, Housing Statistics) and Thomas Westermann, European Central Bank (Head of Section: Prices and Costs). The refereeing process for the papers from this project was coordinated by the Secretary of the expert group (Aidan Meyler). As the dataset is proprietary, it cannot be made available to outside researchers. Thus this paper is released in order to make the working papers and accompanying research carried out by the expert group publicly available. Additional papers from the project group will be published as they are fi nalised. Any queries regarding the project may be addressed to Aidan Meyler ([email protected]). Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Mario Crucini, Attila Ratfai, Aidan Meyler and other group members of the Eurosystem Nielsen Price Analysis Project, the participants of the ECB Workshop “Analysis and Understanding of Grocery Prices in the Euro Area”and the participants of an internal seminar at the Oesterreichische Nationalbank for valuable comments and suggestions. Eniko Gabor provided excellent research assistance. The views expressed in this paper are our own and do not necessarily refl ect those of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank, of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank, and of the European Central Bank. Ádám Reiff European Central Bank and Magyar Nemzeti Bank; e-mail: [email protected] Fabio Rumler Oesterreichische Nationalbank; e-mail: [email protected] © European Central Bank, 2014 Address Kaiserstrasse 29, 60311 Frankfurt am Main, Germany Postal address Postfach 16 03 19, 60066 Frankfurt am Main, Germany Telephone +49 69 1344 0 Internet http://www.ecb.europa.eu All rights reserved. Any reproduction, publication and reprint in the form of a different publication, whether printed or produced electronically, in whole or in part, is permitted only with the explicit written authorisation of the ECB or the authors. This paper can be downloaded without charge from http://www.ecb.europa.eu or from the Social Science Research Network electronic library at http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=2528399. Information on all of the papers published in the ECB Working Paper Series can be found on the ECB’s website, http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/scientifi c/wps/date/html/index.en.html ISSN 1725-2806 (online) ISBN 978-92-899-1150-4 DOI 10.2866/3441 EU Catalogue No QB-AR-14-116-EN-N (online) Abstract Using a comprehensive data set on retail prices across the euro area, we analyze within- and cross-country price dispersion in European coun- tries. First, we study price dispersion over time, by investigating the time-series evolution of the coefficient of variation, calculated from price levels. Second, since we find that cross-sectional price dispersion by far dominates price dispersion over time, we study price dispersion across space and investigate the role of geographical barriers (distance and na- tional borders). We find that (i) prices move together more closely in locations that are closer to each other; (ii) cross-country price dispersion is by an order of magnitude larger than within-country price dispersion, even after controlling for product heterogeneity; (iii) a large part of cross- country price differences can be explained by different tax rates, income levels and consumption intensities. In addition, we find some indication that price dispersion in the euro area has declined since the inception of the Monetary Union. JEL codes: E31, F41 Keywords: price dispersion, international relative prices, border effect ECB Working Paper 1742, November 2014 1 Non-technical summary This paper uses a new, disaggregated data set (collected by AC Nielsen) on prices of 45 products between 2008-2011 to evaluate price dispersion within the euro area. One advantage of the data is that it covers approximately 70 regions in 13 euro area countries, which makes it suitable to study both within- and cross-country price dispersions and evaluate the extent to which prices have become harmonized across countries almost a decade after the introduction of the Euro. A further advantage of the data is that although it is international, it is not affected by exchange rate fluctuations. The paper first analyzes the evolution of price dispersion over time, asking the question of whether intra- or international price dispersion has decreased, as was perhaps expected from the introduction of the common currency. We find some evidence that cross-country price dispersion decreases over time. The decline is statistically significant for about half of the products, but numerically small. In general, we find that approximately